dairy free – zezoo cooks

Blackberry coconut cupcakes with blackberry buttercream

american, baking, birthday, cake, california, celebration, cupcakes and muffins, dairy free, dessert, frosting, seasonal, snack, southern, spring, summer, sweet

This post is a PSA for the glorious combination of blackberries and coconut. Try these out, and you too will wonder why we don’t see these two ingredients together more often! Strawberries and raspberries, sure – but why not blackberries! It’s baffling.

Here I’ve adapted a simple, dairy-free coconut muffin recipe into one that has pops of plump blackberries, that are almost jammy when baked. These are totally delicious and satisfying unadorned, but I couldn’t resist making a gorgeous lavender colored blackberry buttercream to show them a little extra love!

The cupcakes come together in no time, with no beaters or special equipment! I added some coconut flour in addition to the coconut oil, coconut milk and shredded coconut (okay – these are VERY coconut-y), that I think lends a nice bite to these treats!

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Noodles with Chicken and Mushrooms

asian, chicken, chinese, chinese new year, dairy free, dinner, eggless, lunch, main, savory, weeknight, whole grain

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An easy and flexible weeknight recipe for noodles involving ground chicken, mushrooms and a quick sauce that comes together from pantry/fridge ingredients. Add more vegetables if you have them, make it as spicy as you’d like, it’s all good!

Off late I’ve found ground chicken to be so convenient, to put together quick and delicious meals in so little time! No chopping and dicing and browning required, and it gives the recipe some heft without weighing you down. It’s a perfect ingredient for busy weeknights, as you’ll see with this recipe adapted from Bon Appetit magazine!

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Blistered Garlicky Green Beans

appetizer, asian, chinese, chinese new year, dairy free, dinner, eggless, gluten free, grain free, lunch, main, savory, sides, themed, vegan, vegetarian, weeknight

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Growing up, my sister and I ate all our veggies. With my mom, there was no other option – the rule was to finish everything served on the plate whether or not we like it; if we didn’t like something, the only available option was to not have seconds. As a grown up, I haven’t necessarily been “eating all my veggies”. It’s not like I will let them go to waste (there are always stews and gratins and quesadillas to make the boring veggies disappear), but I can admit that I sometimes conveniently “forget” to buy those vegetables when I’m shopping.

My husband frequently bugs me about having “favorites” when it comes to vegetables (hello, potatoes! goodbye, spinach), and now that we have a baby, he warns me that I may not have the necessary moral high ground to make our kid eat all his veggies. Reminds me of an episode of The Big Bang Theory I recently watched where Howard (Simon Helberg) finds out they are expecting a baby, and he is totally freaking out, and tells the guys “I shouldn’t be raising a kid. I don’t even eat my own vegetables.”. Green beans were probably near the top of the list of vegetables I didn’t really care for, until I made these.

These blistered green beans from the Bon Appetit magazine are the best green beans I’ve ever had, and I don’t say such things lightly. Granted I picked this recipe only to get through the mountain of green beans we had languishing in the fridge, because someone (me) didn’t want to eat them (forget about cooking them), but I’m so very glad I did!

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Wontons with Sesame Sauce

appetizer, asian, chicken, chinese, chinese new year, convenience, dairy free, dinner, fall, freezer friendly, lunch, main, make ahead, meal prep, savory, sides, weeknight, winter

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Few times a year I spend the better part of a Saturday assembling wontons. I try to go seasonal with the fillings, but if not, I fall back on the classic fillings: usually a combination of ground chicken, ground pork, diced shrimp, fresh ginger and scallions, and finely chopped water chestnuts. Ever since I took the “Wonders of Wontons” class at the Civic Kitchen in San Francisco, I’ve felt super empowered to experiment with wontons and potstickers. They are easy to assemble (time consuming, sure, but oh so rewarding), easy to freeze, and if you fold them a certain way, can double as boiled wontons as well as potstickers.

This year I tried adapted a recipe from Bon Appetit Magazine, which suggests adding sesame oil as well as vegetable oil to the filling and whisking (almost beating) it till the fat is fully incorporated in the filling. When cooked, it makes for a really lush wonton. I switched the pork for chicken so maybe mine weren’t as fatty as the ones from the original recipe, but still very comforting and delicious!

I usually drop my wontons in a quick chicken broth, but I really loved the Sesame Sauce here – a quick little sesame paste condiment that takes less than a minute to assemble, and I imagine will be delicious with a great number of things. You can always substitute tahini or even peanut butter if you don’t have sesame paste on hand.

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Infinitely Adaptable Instant Pot “end of the week” Soup

american, california, chicken, convenience, dairy free, dinner, eggs, fall, gluten free, grain free, greens, healthy eating, italian, legumes, lentils and pulses, lunch, main, make ahead, meal prep, mexican, recipe card, seasonal, soup, vegan, vegetarian, weeknight, whole grain, winter

This is a template to employ some good ol’ chop therapy, clear out your fridge, and make some soup while you are at it. I call this a template because the base recipe can be adapted to any ingredients you have on hand that you want to use up, that have nowhere else to go. Random sausage links, throw them in. 2 ugly carrots, sure. Stale baguette that’s too dry to do anything with, absolutely! Old can of black beans with no future, use it up!

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Easy and Wildly Inauthentic “Tilgul” (dairy-free, gluten-free sesame energy bites)

celebration, dairy free, dessert, gluten free, grain free, indian, maharashtrian, make ahead, meal prep, sankrant, seasonal, snack, sweet, vegan, vegetarian, weeknight, winter

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Every other year or so I have attempted (and failed at) “Tilgul” – a sweet treat made with sesame seeds (“Til”), jaggery (“Gul”), coconut and a whiff of cardamom, sometimes rolled into balls (“Laddoos”), or formed into bars. There’s many different kinds too, with different levels of complexity (and corresponding failure rates). Some varieties are fudge-y and moist, while others are crunchy and almost brittle-like.

No matter the way, I find it tricky to make Tilgul at home especially with the variation in the jaggery available in the US. It seems to have a lower moisture content sometimes, and other times it liquifies too fast and hardens into a rock. It’s not that my Tilgul attempts have been complete disasters, but they haven’t been as perfect as they should be, or could be (unless you call dismantling it and eating it like granola with your cereal a success).

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